An oil well blowout is the uncontrolled release of oil and/or natural gas on land or below water that occurs when pressure control equipment fails. Prior to the invention of oil well pressure control equipment in the 1920's, blowouts were part of the oil drilling process and commonly referred to as oil gushers. Pressure control equipment is best explained by lumping equipment into two (2) major categories: (1) drilling techniques and (2) blowout preventers.
Drilling techniques are the first line of defense and involve varying the density of the drilling fluid to overcome the downhole pressure of newly drilled zones. If a high pressure zone is drilled into, the drilling liquid reservoir (mud pits) increase in level. On the other hand, if a low pressure vacuous zone is drilled into, the mud pits decrease in level. A rapid increase or decrease in mud pit levels may lead to a blowout if the mud engineer is not able to increase the density and/or volume of the mud to counteract a rapid loss of mud or a rapid increase in downhole pressure.
Blowout preventers (“BOP”) were introduced in the 1920's and are installed at the wellhead in the event that drilling techniques fail and a high pressure release occurs.
When an oil well fails to contain reserves underground with conventional defensive technology such as mud and BOP devices, there currently is not an effective technology to kill the runaway oil well.
Current well-kill technology is largely defensive rather than offensive in nature. When the defensive measure fails, no rapid response offensive measure exists. The only proven offensive response is a bottom kill, which requires drilling a new well-hole subsequently followed by shut-in of the runaway well permanently.
Furthermore, conventional defensive technology, such as mud and BOP devices, are not retrievable.
The time lag associated with an oil well blowing out, flowing into the ocean, and final capping catalyzed by the drilling of relief wells costs oil companies, government, and local industry hundreds of millions of dollars. The costs include lost opportunity and increased insurance premiums and environmental damage to name a few. For example a 15,000 barrels per day (“bpd”) oil well leak in the Gulf of Mexico when crude oil is trading at WTI $70.00/bbl results in a daily economic loss of $1,000,000 not counting environmental impact, mobilized manpower, and associated lawsuits.
An extreme oil leak case in the Gulf of Mexico that occurred in the 1970's, known as the Ixtoc I Pemex Oil Spill, resulted in 3,000,000 barrels of crude oil released into the Gulf. The Ixtoc incident lasted for 294 days at an average release rate of 10,204 bpd. The economic loss solely attributed to depleted reserves from the Ixtoc I Oil Spill today would represent a whopping $210,000,000 excluding mobilized manpower, environmental impact, and associated lawsuits.
There is, therefore, an important and as yet unmet need for an oil pipe plugger that overcomes the problems currently existing in the art, and which allows an oil well to be repaired in a safe, reliable, timely, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly manner, and which allows the well to be used again.